Henry Fuckit Leaves the Womb
PART ONE OF SIX of THE LIFE OF HENRY FUCKIT 1950 – 1980
IAN MARTIN
HENRY FUCKIT LEAVES THE WOMB
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Contents
4 He considers the life of a dilettante
6 He decides to assume a new identity
8 How the loss of his singing voice taught him a hard lesson
10 He learns of his non-existence
11 A portrait of the dilettante as a young man
Bang in the middle of the century, on the stroke of midnight, as the moon rose above the African bush, Mrs O’Riley shrieked in agonized panic, raised her knees and parted her thighs, and began to expel Henry from her womb. He had been perfectly content where he was and would have preferred to remain there. But the rules and regulations governing obstetric procedure decreed otherwise. On entering the world he opened his eyes and gasped in horror. For a brief instant his life lay before him, all sixty-five years of it, and in that instant he understood the impossibility of ever going back. He let out an anguished bellow of rage. And just to confirm that the clock was already ticking, Mrs Hildagonda De Groot, housekeeper cum midwife, slapped his face, held him up by his ankles, shook him, and then hacked through his umbilical cord with a meat cleaver.
Exhausted, Mrs O’Riley lay back on the pillows and began to sing in a serenely dreamy murmur.
“Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny,
Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny …”
Mr O’Riley, Henry’s father, was not present at the birth because he was feeding the little fishes at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean halfway between Cape Town and Southampton. The exact circumstances of his disappearance at sea were never established: was it suicide, or was it misadventure under the influence? All that was known with certainty was that, on the night in question, he had been maudlin-drunk. And with good cause. Regret, guilt and remorse had blended into one powerful emotion. Anger and paranoia had combined to create another. No wonder he was exceedingly distraught!
From the moment Mr O’Riley’s plebeian Irish cock had entered into her patrician English sanctum a sequence of events had followed one upon the other, driving the couple headlong towards disaster. The maculate conception of Henry had come as an appalling shock. Shame and Disgrace were the only attendants at the hasty marriage in the registry office. Then the cruel penance, ostracism. He should never have agreed to the humiliating strategy of taking her off to polite obscurity in the Colonies. Her delicate mind soon took flight from reality and she had grown increasingly preoccupied with her visions and voices. In his search for help he had chanced upon Ingachini and had ensconced her there before hurrying back to England. He would force a showdown with her family. Somehow he would break their frigid resolve and persuade them to take her back into their genteel world of privilege. But he was never to make it beyond that watery halfway point.
The tragical history of Henry’s parents was brought to conclusion with his mother’s demise when he was but three days old. It happened like this: On the second evening after the birth she attempted to climb up onto the roof in the hope of catching a glimpse of the white cliffs of Dover. After all, it was a very clear night and the moon had only just begun to wane. Before she could be rescued she had slipped and done herself an internal injury which seemed minor but resulted in a massive post partum haemorrhage. Twelve hours later she lay stretched out on her bed, her schoolgirl complexion pale and livid, her lips a ghoulish shade of blue, and her lovely grey eyes fixed upon the sight which had eluded her up on the rooftop.
Ingachini. It was a Shona word meaning Place where Wise One consorts with baboons. The main group of buildings stood on a low koppie, and from beneath and within the browlike shadow of the verandas one could look out over the treetops. It had frightened Mrs O’Riley, this view. It was the view of a drowning woman, drowning in Africa, drowning in loneliness. Many years later he was to enquire of an educated Zimbabwean:
“I wonder why it was called the place where the Wise One consorts with baboons?”
The eyes widened and then laughter and thigh slapping.
“Too stupid! That is too much Colonial bullshit. Straight from the horse’s arse.”
“Oh. So what does it mean?”
“Mean? It means Place of the Demented. What else? Ingachini.”
Never mind drowning in a sea of bush, it was a wonderful place. He grew up with the same sort of enthusiasm for it as that expressed by Dr Witherspoon on turning a bend in the dusty path and being confronted by a Coral tree in full bloom.
“Magnificent! Made me decide, on the spot, there and then, to end me days in Africa.”
An extravagant display of red flowers, startling amidst the drabness of dusty greys, yellows and browns. Aggressive, threatening and masculine. It was so un-English.
“Stood rooted to the spot. I was absolutely overwhelmed by the unexpectedness of it. I wanted to shout with laughter, it was so ridiculously extravagant. I must have been transfixed for a good ten minutes, only stirring in response to repeated attacks by a battalion of Megaponera foetens.”
“That’s the Matabele ant, isn’t it?”
“Exactly. Ferociously bellicose, as you well know. Took a lot to distract me. That Coral tree was such an affirmation, such a glorious statement. I knew I had to remain here, where life flows to the surface like blood.”
It was a private institution which had been established for the benefit of Mrs Lydia Rabinowitz shortly after the end of the Second World War. The holocaust had devastated her life, leaving her a widow with emotional and psychological impairments. On a convalescent tour to Africa she had found a certain peace in the bushveld and her wealthy South African relatives had willingly acquired a tract of land for her. A sprawling mansion and some outbuildings were constructed on the koppie which lay in a sea of acacias stretching to the horizon. Three boreholes pumped sweet water into reservoirs, there was a small dairy herd and a kitchen garden, and two diesel-powered generators supplied electricity.
The first Therapeutic Specialist, Dr Gaylord Endaway, was appointed at the beginning of 1948. A young American charlatan of the Freudian school, he was charged with the task of selecting four suitable companions for his principal patient. The criteria he was to use were threefold: they should be well-educated persons of a cultivated and refined disposition; their psychoses should not be debilitating and their delusions should be instructive and entertaining; and, most importantly, they should be pleasing to Mrs Rabinowitz. Within a mysteriously short time Dr Endaway found three candidates who proved eminently acceptable. They soon took up residence and began what was to be a long and congenial stay at Ingachini. Two of these gentlemen were English and one was German: Septimus Braithwaite, Aubrey Witherspoon and Fritz Friedemann. Finding the fifth member of the coterie proved more difficult. For over a year the search continued until late in 1949 Mrs O’Riley was taken in on compassionate grounds. After her death her room remained unoccupied except on the odd occasion when Mr Wim Naaktgeboren made one of his visits. The club of five turned out to be a club of four.
Mrs Rabinowitz was a gentle compassionate person and she insisted that the orphan be fostered at Ingachini until suitable adoptive parents could be found. As no attempt was ever made to locate such parents Henry remained where he was, growing up with a strong sense of security and belonging. This was his family and this was his home. He was one of the inmates just as they were and there was no question of needing to hunt down strangers so that he could call them Mummy and Daddy. That would have been ridiculous.
His education proved to be excellent, of such a high standard as to be beyond assessment by normal pedagogic means. Because of its informal nature he did not at first realise he was receiving any education at all. In the large study, with its French doors leading onto the veranda, the walls were lined with shelves containing the best private library in Africa. The books were catalogued, arranged and kept in fastidious order by Mr Septimus Braithwaite, MA Oxon., Latin scholar, linguist and historian. Dr Aubrey Witherspoon, the renowned entomologist, maintained a fine collection of insects as well as a small herbarium in which the flora of the area was represented in detail. Professor Fritz Friedemann was the brilliant physicist and mathematician who had discovered the unifying principle which had caused Albert Einstein so much frustration. He was also deeply knowledgeable in the areas of Psychology and Philosophy. Here at Ingachini were gathered three of the brightest minds of the century, only a little deranged, and they were at his disposal for the first eighteen years of his life. No wonder his interests were encyclopaedic. No wonder his curiosity was voracious and insatiable. No wonder he developed a view of the world that was to set him aside from the vast majority of his peers.
Not that he grew up without the company of ordinary mortals. They were there in the form of staff, children of staff, family and friends of staff, and the passing world.
Frikkie Welgemoed and Alan were roughly his age, maybe a year or two older. Alan was the son of the housekeeper, Mrs Hildagonda de Groot. She was a Dutch widow of formidable strength, greatly respected by the houseboys and, for that matter, any other boys unfortunate enough to encounter her. Frikkie’s father was in charge of the garden-boys and maintenance-boys. He ran a tight ship. Gave short shrift. Called a spade a spade. Knew where they stood, they did.
Then there was Frikkie’s sister Lucille. She was surprisingly slim and pretty. Surprising, considering the grossness, the Cro-Magnon coarseness of her parents. In later years, on the pavements of Pretoria, he was to observe this puzzling phenomenon on a grand scale. So many luscious girls, all with ugly mothers, fathers and brothers. Not long before he left Ingachini at the age of eighteen he was shocked to learn that Alan had been fucking this sister of Frikkie’s. Not once or twice, not even three times. No. Thirteen times! According to Alan, who had a healthy imagination but was not an habitual liar, on thirteen separate occasions he had screwed Frikkie’s sister in, on and under various items of household furniture!
Except for these three young people, Alan, Frikkie and Lucille, there were no other white children at Ingachini, and he grew up largely in the company of adults. There were, of course, plenty of young kaffir boys with whom he, Alan and Frikkie waged war, smoked dagga, and played much soccer.
4 He considers the life of a dilettante
When he was about fourteen he was witness to an encounter which was to have an important influence on his development. In the presence of Herr Friedemann, Mr Braithwaite and young Henry Dr Witherspoon passed the following critical judgement: “No real depth, I’m afraid. The man’s a dilettante.” He had just finished perusing Braithwaite’s copy of the Collected Poems of Wystan Hugh Auden.
The gardenboys stood motionless in the shade, poised thoughtfully over their hoes and spades. Cook turned off the kettle and stared at the flies on the ceiling. The houseboys ceased their sweeping of invisible dust on the stoeps and gazed out across the treetops, their eyes unfocussed. Even a vast multitude of white ants, above and below ground, halted simultaneously in the acts of gnawing, scurrying, pushing and dragging, and listened attentively. Even the birds, even the very cicadas were mute. The silence was appalling.
His face the colour of reptilian underbelly, Braithwaite rose to his feet and directed his terrible gaze across the library table. His eyes protruded like those of the mudskipper, genus Periophthalmus, semi-amphibious mangrove fish given to glaring from treetops. His body was trembling as with the palsy.
“Dilly-bloody-tarnty?! Dilly-bloody-tarnty!!?” He squawked like parrot shot through wing with pygmy arrow.
“You, Sir …” His lips twitched and he panted for breath. “You, Sir, are an abominable Philistine!” Clutching at his collar he tottered from the room.
A bird chirped, a cicada began to zing, and there was movement. Once more the world came alive with vibrations, oscillations and resonances. Henry closed Gray’s Anatomy and went straight to the good old, two-volume, complete-with-magnifier, OED.
From his seat Witherspoon murmured absently, “Dee, I, ell, (only one ell), ee, tee, tee, (two tee’s), A, enn, tee, ee.”
Henry breathed heavily all over the rectangular magnifying glass and polished it with his snotrag.
“A person who cultivates the arts as an amateur.” He gasped. “A person who takes an interest in a subject merely as a pastime and without serious study. (Holy-moly!) A dabbler. (GCM!)”
He looked at Witherspoon with descaled eyes. He greatly admired the old goat but this was masterly. Henry knew that secretly he was an Auden aficionado. The casual pronouncement was an act of pure wickedness.
It might have been a sense of his own worth that nurtured the maverick in him. Unselfconsciously he was able to follow his own inclinations, oblivious of any requirements to conform. Thus it was that when he chanced upon this term “dilettante”, he looked at it with unclouded curiosity. It had been intended as an insult, of that he was aware. But when he considered the definition and visualized the character, the lifestyle, he saw nothing to be despised. In fact, the more he thought about it the more the role appealed. What was wrong with dabbling? What was wrong with taking an interest in a subject merely as a pastime? His education at Ingachini had already indicated to him that life itself was a pastime and not worth serious study. The trick would be to devise a plan which allowed one to pursue one’s interests without having to concern oneself over much with the distraction of having to earn bread by the sweat of the brow.
In the formative years he received no vocational guidance, nor did any well-meaning soul warn him of the danger in not making a suitable choice of career. However, on several occasions he was asked what he was going to be in life. Each time he took this question seriously and gave it some thought before replying. Because it was such a troublesome question, such a vastly open one, the process of answering it was lengthy. Even if the answer was always the same the process varied in degrees of confusion, anguish and irritation, thus giving rise to the aforementioned lengthiness. The invariable answer was, “I really don’t know.” Invariable, that is, until the brave bold day on which he smiled brightly and spoke with such self-assured candour.
“I’m going to be a dilettante.”
From the house there was a path which followed a contour westward and then described a steep ess down into the trees. The cave was at the base of the koppie, its entrance partly obscured by an old, lichen-covered sycamore fig. Above the mouth a rockface reached up vertically for some twenty feet before sloping back into the vegetation. This wall was permanently damp and mossy, and with the summer rains became a waterfall which fell in a curtain before the opening. The African people of the area, whose senses were better attuned to such things than were the blunted susceptibilities of the Europeans, knew that this was a special place and were fearful of it.
The interior of the cave was uniformly clean, bare and dry. Strangely, there were no signs that it had ever been frequented by man, and there were no droppings or other litter to indicate the comings and goings of bats or owls or other creatures. It was a deep funnel reaching some twenty or twenty-five paces into the hillside and ending, not in a cul-de-sac but a black orifice less than a foot in diameter.
Of course, the learned gentlemen were experts in speleology, all three of them, having specialised knowledge in a variety of disciplines which could be applied to the explanation of subterranean phenomena such as this cave – geochemistry, mineralogy, petrology, geophysics, volcanology, geomorphology, stratigraphy, hydrology, geochronology, archaeology, paleontology, biospeleology and anthropology. Many hours were spent discussing and arguing the exact nature and origin of the Ingachini Cave, with numerous disagreements on minor technical points. However, it was unanimously agreed that this cave was not of the solution variety caused by some form of erosion but rather it was without doubt the result of two combined geological occurrences: the volcanic vent and the lava tube.
Henry followed the scholarly analysis, conjecturing and hypothesising, and picked up a good deal of knowledge which might or might not prove to be of some use to him one day. He regularly visited the cave, sometimes to masturbate but mostly just to enjoy the coolness and the peaceful ambience. He liked to crawl the last few yards of the funnel and lie on his stomach, chin on folded arms, gazing into the black orifice, wondering if it led anywhere. He had initially expected to smell a cold dankness there but had been surprised to note instead a faint scent that, far from being damp and unwholesome, was a gentle sweet-spiciness reminding him of the cool, dry air that wafted in through his window as a fine spring day was just breaking. He imagined that somewhere deep within the koppie lay a great cavern and a system of tunnels. He would let his mind enter this fantastic subterranean world and experience adventures that were more fanciful and more bizarre than anything to be found in JRR Tolkien or Jules Verne.
It was also discovered by Henry, Frikkie and Alan that the walls of the cave were phosphorescent. They had gone there one night in order to disprove the legend that the place was frequented by demons. Old Shadrack, the shoeboy, was also the local sangoma, and he had warned them of the danger of entering the cave, especially upon nightfall. Accordingly, one night, their spirits fortified with a bottle of cooking sherry, and armed with a stout knobkierrie apiece, they nervously made their way through the dark with the aid of flashlights. At the entrance to the cave they halted, turned off their lights, and listened. A soft breeze had sprung up and was stirring the leaves of the tree. It was when their eyes had adjusted to the moonless night about them that they simultaneously became aware of a glow from within. In alarm they huddled together, whispering hoarsely, wishing they hadn’t been so brave. At first they thought there must be a fire burning within but the light was only a glow and did not have the characteristic flicker of firelight. Finally Frikkie groped about for a stone and hurled it into the dark interior. There was a clatter as it fell. No roar of rage ensued, so they switched on all three torches and directed the triple beam before them.
“Cease the soiling of thy linen, brethren.” In Henry’s voice there was no evidence of the relief he was feeling. “Cast thy gazes into every nook and cranny with fearless scientific curiosity. This cavern be devoid of any discernible presence.” They walked in as far as it was possible to go whilst maintaining an upright stance. “We were well justified in scoffing at the craven superstitions of that dusky primitive, Shadrack the shoeboy. Now let us investigate the strange luminosity. Snuff out thy lanterns.”
The next day they had excitedly reported their discovery to the Ingachini Scientific Society. Where the walls of the cave funnelled back to the orifice there had been a distinct glow of a pale greenish hue. The further into the funnel, the more intense was the luminescence, and the orifice itself glowed strongly. It was as if the source of the light lay somewhere deep within the hillside and was seeping out into the cave.
“Zis is incredible! It is kvite clearly ze visible manifestation of electromagnetic forces at vork, zus producing ze phenomenon of phosphorescence.”
“Quite so, Fritz old chap.” Witherspoon concurred. “Must be phosphorescence. But I wonder what type of radiation is involved. And where is the source?”
“Zere could be strong deposits of uranium or plutonium right here under our bottoms vere ve are sittingk. Or ze possibility is existing zat zis is ancient phosphorescence remaining over for sousands of years in ze form of ze electron trap. To be sure, vot ve are needingk is und Geiger counter.”
But they never gained access to such sophisticated equipment and no more precise an explanation was forthcoming.
6 He decides to assume a new identity
“He wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire.” This was the idiomatic vulgarism which inspired Henry to change his name. He heard it from Alan, who was using it to illustrate the meanness of Frikkie’s father and the futility of asking him for the loan of some carpentry tools. It immediately made Henry think of the resentful feelings he had been exploring over the past weeks. Now, thanks to Alan, he was able to articulate a mental statement about his British relatives, whoever they might be: “If I were to meet any of them I wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire.” Having acknowledged the strength of his sentiments it was a logical development to want to discard the name he had been given. And then, a few days later, he was to overhear a conversation which would encourage him to pursue this desire further.
The occasional visits paid by Wim Naaktgeboren, known in his painful youth as Kaalgat, or Kallie for short, were always invigorating. Braithwaite and Witherspoon addressed him jocularly as “Knackers, old boy,” and enjoyed his conversation.
It was late morning in mid-August. On the south veranda it was still cool and the company lounged in an assortment of furniture. The sea of flat-topped acacias spread before them, blurring into a grey haze in the distance. The bush was very dry and the smell of dust rose towards them as the day warmed up.
Ten o’clock tea had been served, consumed and cleared away. Conversation lapsed. Then from the kitchen came the crash of crockery and the familiar scream of rage.
“Gott verdommit! Jou verdomte swart duiwel!” And the sound of blows.
Witherspoon sighed. Friedemann tut-tutted. Mrs Rabinowitz stifled a sob. Alan turned a page of the French Grammar he had strategically opened on his lap and resumed fantasizing about Frikkie’s sister.
“That reminds me, Knackers Old Boy. Been meaning to speak to you about a matter of historical and linguistic import. This damn silly Dutch name of yours. Recently I chanced upon a reference in one of me journals to this peculiar tendency to sport the most bizarre of surnames. You must have looked into it yourself?”
He and Naaktgeboren were seated on the riempie bench a few paces from Henry, who immediately pricked up his ears. He had been standing before the telescope, slowly sweeping the treetops in the hope of spotting Frikkie, whom he had seen hurrying away from the building towards the bush not five minutes earlier. It was one of Welgemoed’s youthful idiosyncrasies to remove his khaki shorts and gusseted cotton underpants at the base of a marulla tree and ascend as high as possible in order to defecate. Witherspoon described this behaviour as “atavistic”, saying it harked back to the boys’ primeval ancestry.
“Of course I’ve looked into it.” It was obviously a matter of some sensitivity.
“And what did you come up with?”
“This name of mine is a curse. That’s what I came up with. It’s been an albatross about my neck since earliest childhood and even now it’s a cause for embarrassment.”
“It means `born naked`, doesn’t it? One would think that a name like that was imposed on the first bearer of it. He couldn’t have selected it of his own volition.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. When Napoleon’s forces overran Holland in 1805 there were no Naaktgeborens. When all citizens were required to register, mainly so that Napoleon could keep track of them and efficiently collect a poll tax, there were many who still did not have a formal surname. Being the stubborn, resentful nation that they are they went about concocting the most ridiculous names they could think of.”
“Ah, so it is a joke name. A prank. Any other amusing examples?”
“A damned stupid joke! After a good laugh at the French they were left with names which made them laughing stocks for generations to follow. What comfort can I draw from the fact that they insulted Napoleon and ridiculed his Code? If ever there was a joke that backfired that was it. Bloody Dutchmen!”
Henry had forgotten all about the bare-arsed tree-shitter (Homo defecato arborealis). This was riveting stuff. It was as if the conversation was being conducted for his benefit.
“Well, at least the Dutch had the good sense to reject the little Corsican maniac. But let’s leave that aside for the time being. I’m interested in other names of the same ilk.”
So was Henry. The lines of anguish on the man’s face were testimony to the pain his name had inflicted on him. And here was Braithwaite relentlessly pursuing the course of enquiry, satisfying his academic inclinations whilst at the same time taking some sadistic pleasure from making the object squirm.
“Met a chap on the Pendennis Castle on me way over, by the name Hoogenboezem. Must have been another of these anti-Napoleonic reactionaries. Fell overboard twice. Once off St Helena, and then again approaching the roadsteads, Table Mountain on the horizon. Come on, Knackers Old Boy, rack the cerebrum and add to the list.”
After a long interval in which Naaktgeboren vacillated between two courses of action, he finally settled for the latter, which was to suppress the urge to follow the former, and instead stood his ground, gritted his teeth and treated the subject in question dispassionately, as was befitting a scholar of his stature. The former was to stand stiffly to attention and bark like a rabid baboon before goose-stepping off to his billet.
Septimus Braithwaite’s years of formal study and scholastic endeavour had engendered in him certain habits that he continued to maintain with steadfast fastidiousness. Six days a week he would make his appearance in the dining room as the seven o’clock pips were sounding over the wireless. On Sundays and holidays it would be seven-thirty. Clean shaven, hair combed and parted and smelling of Morgan’s Pomade, shoes a-shining, he always wore a jacket, lounge shirt, tie and flannels. The jacket alternated between a navy blue double-breasted blazer with silver buttons, and a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches. Displayed like medals above the outer left breast pocket were fountain pen, pencil and magnifying glass. The flip-over shorthand note book with wire ring spine was kept in the inside right hand pocket. Henry smiled with approval as Braithwaite opened the note book and poised his pencil expectantly.
NAAKTGEBOREN’S LIST
Naaktgeboren born naked
Hoogenboezem high bosom
Zondervan without surname
Schietekat shoot a cat
Dooyman dead man
Fynvandraat full of nonsense
Poepjes diminutive turd
De Zwart the devil
Schoft illegitimate
Bastaard bastard
Van Der Pik from the penis
Augerkiesverkoper gherkin vendor
Rugkrapper back scratcher
Well, if those silly Dutch buggers could be so bold, what was to stop him, Henry O’Riley, from changing his given name to one of his own choice? But what was it to be?
*
“Just because I don’t feel British and have no family ties, just because I want to make a break and start off fresh with a new name when I go out into the world, just because of this it doesn’t mean I have to have a problem, Herr Fritz.”
Herr Fritz looked as if he might not continue. “Alright. If you insist. So what IS the problem? In a nutshell. Consign me to the appropriate pigeon hole, please. I am all ears and totally agog, as silly old Sir Septic Septimus puts it. Fire away.”
“To be arrogant and insolent at twice ze same time is ze hallway marking of ze rich and ze powerful. But bevare: remember ze Cherman proverb,
Wenn wir sitzen in der Schanke
Fragen wir nichts nah dem Grabe.”
“Shitzen in der shanken, Fragen in der Graben? Sounds a little vulgar. What does it mean in English?”
“Ven ve are sittingk in ze tavern ve are shparingk no soughts for ze grabe. You might not care a toffee-nosed damnation at zis moment of ekshtreme youf but vait a vile for ze catashtrophe around ze corner.”
“Then I’ll be shitzen in der unterpanten, hey?”
“Ziss is ze classic case of schizophrenia. Ze refusal to accept yourself as ze vone person and ze attempt to kill ze old self and nurture ze uzzer, new self – zis is ze clear symptom of ze psychotic mind. You ask ze vorld to shtretch ze imagination beyond ze limits of common sense. Ze vorld is not prepared to go to such limits of hellish ridiculosity. You sink you can change your name and, poof!, your past life is gone to ze efer. Ze vorld vill not stand for it. Hark my vords. I know zis. Look at me. And ze flash of inshpiration, ze arrogance, ze omnipotence: all zis is classic depersonalization, derealization, nihilistic delusions. You are ze Christmas fruit cake, vizout doubt, and vot surname? Jehovah, I presume?”
*
Witherspoon and Braithwaite shared a passion for Shakespeare. Accordingly Henry was raised on quotations, allusions, analysis, comparison and argument around the tragedies, histories, comedies and sonnets. At times it irritated him intensely, and he resorted to parodying the two men. But in general he was an enthusiastic student, having his favourite passages which he committed to memory and would recite at appropriate and inappropriate moments, as the mood took him. As he grew to know the characters he formed opinions about them and had his likes and dislikes. In general, although he enjoyed quoting him, he found Hamlet a humourless bugger who took himself far too seriously. He could sympathise with Othello’s situation but he was such a victim, Iago such an unmitigated swine, Desdemona such a helpless piece of skirt, that he felt exasperation with the play. He liked King Lear no end. On November afternoons, as the black anvils advanced on Ingachini, forked lightning fizzing and crackling, and claps and rolls of thunder detonating above and about him, he thrilled to stand on the south veranda waiting for the rain. He would wait for the first gust of air. Then the big slow, scattered drops in the dust. With a rush of cool dampness and a mighty flash and clap of thunder the torrents would fall and he began to bellow whilst striding back and forth, tugging at his hair, wild-eyed. “Ye cataracts and hurricanes,” he screamed, “drown the steeples, drench the cocks!” His lips moved but barely a sound could be heard above the almighty dinning of hail on the zinc roofs. Lear’s absurd rage at his fate was something Henry did not understand, yet was drawn to. His two favourite personae, however, were Caliban and Falstaff. Herr Friedemann, who also had a large amount to say on the subject of Shakespearean characterisation, mostly from an existentialist slant, declared this affinity he felt with the fat, cowardly buffoon and the brutish, rampant, foul-mouthed freak was a manifestation of classic personality dysfunction.
“You are right, Herr Doctor Professor Carl-Sigmund von Kopkrapper. It is definitely the result of my inability to face myself and the ugly world out there. Proceed.”
“You identify vit schwein, like zese dogs, rozzer zan vif ze heroic figures. Fear of failure, you see. So vot ist ze choice? Caliban Falshtaff ?
In the large library-cum-study the Morris chair to the left of the French doors leading onto the south verandah was reserved for Herr Friedemann. It was an elderly piece of furniture with open, padded arms and loose cushions in the seat and back. The fabric bore an intricate pattern of birds, flowers and leaves, the predominant colours being green, rust and blue on a cream background. The fact that the back of this chair was fixed and not adjustable disqualified it, said Mr Braithwaite, professed authority on late nineteenth century English arts and crafts, from being classified as a true Morris chair. This technicality however did not deter the others from referring to it as “Herr Friedemann’s Morris chair”.
“Damn it, boy! Close your mouth and stop ogling me as if I were a young woman in a state of undress. Blithering gillygawpus! North Sea cod!” This was how Witherspoon reprimanded him on one occasion. For a while he attempted to be more surreptitious, but soon lapsed. The touch of his gaze grew familiar to them and they gradually submitted. Finally they were inured and it was not unusual for him to sit staring at one of them for up to fifteen minutes at a stretch.
His favourite mental portrait of Herr Friedemann captured the stunted, deformed figure seated in his Morris chair looking out through the library door. In semi-profile, and looked down on from a standing height, his left lateral and anterior aspects were displayed to advantage and there was a fine aerial view of his head, which could be studied in axonometric detail. He looked straight ahead through steel rimmed spectacles, his eyes focused on something in the distance: a pattern in the sky perhaps, a column of rising smoke maybe, or, more likely, a patch of light shimmering like a mirage and beaming energy directly across the tree tops and in through the half open door to be received by his cerebral cortex and converted into yet another brilliant insight, another stroke of genius.
The long, thin delicate fingers of his left hand curled loosely over the end of the arm, ready to drum in tune to Mrs Rabinowitz at the piano, or to tap irritably and irritatingly, or to grip till the knuckles stood out white with rage. His right hand drooped limply, the wrist projecting beyond the end of the right arm of the chair. Above the wrists two inches of white cuff showed beyond the sleeves of his outsize, crumpled black suit. Black tie, black waistcoat. Spindly bowlegs, crossed left knee over right. Grey socks, effeminate little shoes still gleaming black from the pre-dawn shine they had received at the hands of Shadrack the shoeboy. The kyphotic curve to his spine created the impression that his head was too far forward atop his torso. The prominence of his sternum lent to his chest the characteristic inflatedness of a pigeon. His head was proportionately too large for his body. His nose was possibly his best feature after his eyes. Not quite aquiline like a Roman senator’s, it was nevertheless slim and refined. There was an ever-so-slight pendulosity to the fleshy tip. His chin was weak and receding in the style worn by the gormless nobility of England and Germany, whilst the maxilla jutted antagonistically, which was unfortunate. This resulted in malocclusion of the dental arches and a convex facial profile. A life-long struggle to elongate the upper lip and to refrain from smiling, let alone laughing, had resulted in a permanent pout. A further consequence of this convexity was a deep simian furrow either side of his mouth, stretching downwards from the jugonasal fold below his eye to the line of his jaw. (On only one precious occasion had Henry seen him give a full and unrestrained grin. Dolf Welgemoed had been working himself into an apoplectic fury, berating one of his boys in a hateful tirade of abuse. Having worked himself up sufficiently he had unbuckled the heavy leather belt, which Frikkie knew so well, and begun to administer a thrashing. A boot had slipped, legs went in opposite directions, there was a ripping sound and two buttons were catapulted from their moorings. His voluminous drill shorts had fallen about his ankles like a collapsing tent. Desperately he had attempted to hoist them back up and in so doing totally lost his balance and fallen backwards to land with seismic force upon his more than ample behind. Henry had bellowed with derision. A glance over his shoulder had discerned the only other witness to this comical scene. Herr Friedemann`s delight was so intense that his face had split open like a coconut. Four glistening white incisors extruded in a manner befitting a member of the Castoridae, that family respected above all other families for their gnawing abilities. The sight had been a gift, a rare gem, which Henry treasured in his memory.) His skull was massive and totally bereft of hair. The skin was taut and transparent with a frail delicacy like that of Dresden china. This head was a thing of great beauty and inspired him to make a superficial study of anatomy, archaeology, paleontology, craniology, phrenology and the manufacture of fine porcelain. Of the numerous blood vessels that were visible, by far the most beckoning to the visual explorer was the parietal branch of the superficial temporal artery. Having flowed from the lower reaches of the Carotid it wended its way to the surface and could be traced for some considerable distance upstream before disappearing from view into the depths of Herr Friedemann`s cranial vault. It was blue like the Danube and had a life of its own; heaving, sluggish and serpentine. His larger skullbones, the frontal, parietal and temporal, were clearly delineated by the sagital and coronal sutures, which showed as hairline cracks beneath the cutaneous glaze. An atavism was clearly at work in the pronounced eminence of his nuchal crest and occipital protuberance. This gave to the nape of his neck a bulkiness that was brutish and threatening in silhouette, immediately recognisable as the partial profile of a troglodytic gorilla. A second throwback to ancestral genes was the slight over-prominence of his orbital ridge, which was not quite consistent with the average form in modern Homo sapiens. This gave to his brows a beetling aspect, as if he were permanently brooding, which indeed he was. He was adorned with large fleshy ears that stood well proud of his head. Henry felt that they were not quite part of him, as if they had attached themselves there like fungus to the bole of a tree. And his eyes. His eyes were nothing like the sun. Rather, they were like the eyes of the grey-beard loon with the capacity to arrest the beholden in their tracks. Certainly they glittered. They were the colour favoured by pavement portrait artists – an indeterminate green-grey-blue which changed in different light and defied exactness of reproduction. The colour was of no consequence. What mattered was what Henry saw whenever he looked directly into Herr Fritz`s visual apparatus. An internal light source of great intensity like the white brilliance emitted by energised krypton gas could be glimpsed in the form of sparks and flickers jumping from his pupils as they contracted and dilated. Or so it seemed to Henry’s wild imagination as he gazed and gazed. It is little wonder that throughout the rest of his life he was able to recall the exact appearance of his dear uncles and aunt.
8 How the loss of his singing voice taught him a hard lesson
Until the onset of puberty he possessed a beautiful voice. Sometimes he sang duets with Mrs Rabinowitz whilst she provided the piano accompaniment. Braithwaite presided over the Ingachini Glee Club, which met every second Thursday of the month. At these meetings Henry sang the alto parts in a clear, thin falsetto. Braithwaite and Friedemann were both tenor, Witherspoon bass, and Naaktgeboren, when visiting, a strong baritone. When his voice cracked and broke into several useless pieces he was obliged to withdraw into the shadows and merely hum, much to his disappointment. They tried to console him by assuring him that this setback was only temporary. After all, unless a castrato, all boys go through a period when their vocal cords and associated ligaments and muscles suddenly undergo a growth spurt, and then within a year or two they regain control of their voices at an octave or so lower than prior to the change.
Before his voice had broken he was aware that in the pleasure of singing there was something special which made him feel light and invigorated. When he was singing Schubert’s “Gesang der Geister uber den Wassem”, harmonising with his three uncles, enunciating Goethe’s simple words, comparing man’s soul to water, rising, falling and rising again, he experienced something of the euphoria which is associated with the escape from reality. Only later when he had been deprived of this pleasure and realised that he would probably never experience it again did he begin to analyse this state of lightness and invigoration. He asked himself whether this sensation was the converse of something else. And if it was, then the antithesis had to be heaviness and boredom, and it was by far the most prevalent. My God, he thought, does this imply that the general condition of existence is characterised by heaviness and boredom? If indeed this be so then I weep with pity for myself. Singing uplifted me. Now I am bereft. Woe is me!
By sixteen his voice had settled down. But what a voice it had become! It had descended to a dark depth from whence it arose with sly intent; fruity and seductive, and yet at the same time menacing, with a rough edge, a rasp and a phlegmy gruffness. It could be gentle and humorous, and when used in formal conversation pleasantly beguiling. Received Pronunciation was taught to him by Braithwaite (Oxford), and Witherspoon (BBC). The additional influences of the Nguni, Afrikaans, Yiddish and German versions of spoken English had combined to produce in him a posh, la-di-dah accent with mild Southern African flavour. Erudition had equipped him with an extensive vocabulary which he employed in a grandiloquent manner befitting a dilettante. He could read aloud with expression, power and sonority, and it had been suggested, to his amusement, that he enter the church or politics.
“Jesus Holy Christ Almighty! The Church? I’m not an ignorant peasant, you know. I’ve heard of Copernicus. I even know something about Newton, Darwin and Einstein. I micturate upon the Church. Politics? Do you take me for a lying scoundrel? Fuck thee hence!”
Despite his scorn his voice would indeed have suited him ideally in the pursuit of such vocations. As an itinerant preacher he could have thundered at the sinners with excellent effect, filling their souls with fear and awe. As a rabble-rouser he would have had no difficulty in awakening the hatred and prejudice slumbering in the heart of the average citizen. He laughed heartily when Braithwaite suggested he train to be a Shakespearean actor. For this too his voice and his clowning ability would have served him well. But no, it was not to be. A dilettante does not commit himself to any one course, nor does he subject himself to the constraints of dedication or single-mindedness or discipline or pertinacity.
He also perceived that giving up singing deprived him of a special kind of artistic experience. Each of his three mentors claimed to have developed their own theory of aesthetics and it was a topic of discussion that often found its way onto the daily agenda. As a result Henry was aware that the creation, appreciation and criticism of Art comprised a richly complex area for intellectual exploration. Already he was busy with his own fledgling aesthetic.
“What you want to sit there looking at that crap for?”
“Yah, man. How can you just keep staring at that old fartface? Shit, man, just look at him!”
Henry closed the book. For the last hour he had been poring over the Rembrandt self-portraits. He sighed and looked at them with pity. “To throw pearls before a pair of swine like the two of you would amount to an act not only of futility but also sacrilege. How can I communicate with you when I dwell on the mountain top and you root about in the fetid boglands far, far below? Do you want me to try and enlighten you?”
“No. Put the book away. Kick-off’s at three-thirty and we got to warm up. You know what happened last time we played Tottering Hotboys.”
“You can tell us on the way over. Let’s go.”
That very morning Witherspoon and Friedemann had been discussing Aristotle’s views on the art of fiction. Because this was still fresh in his memory he agreed to adopt a peripatetic style of instruction. As they strode three-abreast down the dirt track towards the sunbaked clearing that served as a soccer field he expounded, all the while imagining himself to be in the company of two fellow-Athenians on their way to the Lyceum.
“Let me start by giving a brief answer to the question, Why do I spend so much time contemplating art? I contemplate art in order to enhance my experience of life. That’s the concise answer. But, I hear you say, and quite justifiably, so concise as to be elliptical. This amounts to little more than saying, I like it because I like it. Allow me to dispel any suspicion that I might be a tongue-tied ignoramus and offer you a more detailed yet condensed analysis. Feel free at a later stage to return to any of the points that I am now about to make. Once we have tested our athletic abilities on the Olympian turf we shall have the opportunity to do justice to this topic. In the meantime let me say the following: art is multifaceted. Like a compass it has eight cardinal points. The first is its ability to enhance the …”
“Hey, hey, hey. Not so fast, Picasso. Any bloody idiot knows the compass has only four cardinal points: north, south, east, west. Obviously hasn’t the faintest idea where he is, hey Friks? Ha, ha, ha.”
“Contain the merriment, Alanmemnon. When I say cardinal points I mean to include the subcardinals: northeast, southeast, southwest and northwest. Four plus four equals eight. The first, as I was saying, is the ability to enhance the thought processes. Secondly, it offers one sensual delight, sometimes in the form of erotic pleasure. Thirdly…”
“You mean when you’re looking at that miserable old guy you’re sitting there with a cockstand?”
“Don’t be so base, Frikadillus. Your father is right. You’ll end up a wheel-tapper on the Railways. Thirdly, art promotes a sense of cultural community and historical continuity. Fourthly, it instructs, having the capacity to inform, moralize and propagandize. Five, art can be most therapeutic and soothing. Six and seven, it provides an escape from reality and it is a consolation in the face of reality. And finally, art offers us a glimpse of a higher reality: something to inspire us and uplift us and give us hope. That is the general theory. Now let us turn our attention to the specific art of Rembrandt van Rijn as embodied in his series of self-portraits. The progress from …”
“Where are your boots? Christ, man, where’s your BOOTS!?”
“Boots? Oooo. Yissis!”
The three of them had halted in the track. They were all looking at Henry’s feet, size eleven, which were shod with a pair of blue and white rubber sandals of a very simple open design, known as “slops” and manufactured at the Bata Shoe Company. The urgent ring of a bicycle bell sounded behind them and Joseph, Ingachini United’s star on the right wing, skidded to a halt, his back wheel throwing up a cloud of dust.
“Joseph! My brother!” Alan saw the solution immediately. “Hey, man, we need your help. This makulu mampara, haikona futbol skatula. Hai! Stupid bastard! He take your bicycle. Maningi tshetsha. Hamba tata skatula. Niga wena five Lucky Strike. OK?”
And thus Henry’s dissertation had been brought to an abrupt close and he was unable to explain how the self-portraits were enlivened by his aesthetic awareness, and how the loss of his singing voice had deprived him of a vehicle for artistic expression and enjoyment.
*
He had despaired of ever singing again. That was until the day he heard Joe Cocker. Alan had returned from Bulawayo with four of the latest seven singles fresh from the UK and America, the latest from Sodom and Gomorrah. “It’s Been A Hard Day’s Night” by the Beatles, with “Let It Be” on the flip side; “Blowing In The Wind” and “Mr Tambourine Man” by Bob Dylan; “Try A Little Bit Harder” and “Cry Baby” by Janis Joplin; and “You Can Leave Your Hat On” and “Don’t You Love Me Anymore?” by Cocker. He was greatly encouraged by the fact that they all had atrocious voices, and yet did not let that little detail stop them from singing. Alan said that Joe Cocker used to be a plumber’s mate before becoming a rock star. It had been his habit to sniff glue and smoke pot simultaneously, and one disastrous day, whilst toiling in a sewer, he had paused to light up. A minor explosion had ensued, leaving his vocal cords in a ruinous state of first degree singe.
“The doctors,” Alan said, “The doctors said the damage was entirely due to methane gas. And that’s why he gave up plumbing.”
“Plumbing’s a kak job, that’s for sure.” Frikkie was in complete agreement with Joe’s decision. “Nothing wrong with dagga. Or glue.”
Henry’s mind was hard at work. If this yob could rise above adversity then surely he, with all his natural talent, superior education and strength of character, could find a way to salvage something from a seemingly hopeless situation.
Accordingly, he began to study Cocker’s technique. Again and again he played the record, every now and again attempting to sing along in harmony. He began to despair. The higher notes were impossible. All he was achieving was a sore throat. Alan and Frikkie were first amused at his antics and then lost patience.
“Man, you’re going to stuff up my record. It’s wearing thin as paper,” was Alan’s concern. On the point of admitting defeat he turned off the player and sat looking gloomily at his two friends.
“Yissis!” Suddenly Frikkie was excited and on his feet. “Shout. You just got to shout. When you’re on the soccer field you sound just like this Cocksucker oke. Try it, man. Try it. Come on. Shout, PASS THE FUCKIN’ BALL!”
At first somewhat cautiously and then more boldly he tried it. By Gad, Frikkers was right. If he bawled out the words and kept close to the tune it was most definitely a variety of singing. He quickly mastered the two songs and, full of hope, cast about for an audience.
“Try Lucille with “Keep Your Hat On,”” was Alan’s advice. “Before you’re halfway she’ll have her panties round her ankles.”
Bad advice. Before he was halfway she had slapped his face and flounced from the room. Next he requested an audition with the Glee Club. Ever indulgent, Mrs Rabinowitz agreed to listen to the record and try to reproduce the chords on the piano. After three rehearsals Henry was satisfied and eager to announce his readiness. However, the afternoon before the big night her nerves snapped and she broke down in a flood of tears.
“Oi, yoi, yoi! How can you singk such woids to ze gentlemen? Wot are zey goingk to tink? Oi, yoi, yoi.”
“Jesus, Mama Rabsy! After all this effort! Alright. If you won’t, you won’t. What about “Don’t You Love Me Anymore?””
She was adamant. It had to be proper music that the gentlemen could appreciate. Thus it was that for the next fortnight they toiled at “Nessun dorma” from Puccini’s Turandot. It took a lot of coaxing, flattery, reassurance, encouragement and understanding on the part of the aspiring artiste to get Mrs R to the brink of presentation. Shite man, he thought to himself, am I a devoted son or am I an indulgent father to this beloved old female? He knew that he had to be something of both, acknowledging that, by comparison, for him all of this was so easy and for her it was so impossibly difficult.
The night arrived. He persuaded her to take a small glass of cooking sherry and spoke calmly and ever–so-sweetly to her. Her nerve held and before the gentlemen seated in the lounge they accomplished all that he could have hoped to achieve. She played faultlessly and he shouted his way through the aria with controlled gusto. At the end of it there was a round of polite applause from the gentlemen, various other visitors, and the kitchen boys and girls. The latter were approving and unrestrained in their appreciation, being most perspicacious when it came to buffo, the burlesque and the farcical.
However, the way in which the three uncles avoided his gaze confirmed what he had known from the outset but had not wanted to accept: a door had not just been closed; it had been broken out and the opening had been bricked up. Only now, at the conclusion of this exercise in futility, was he capable of acknowledging defeat. For many days he brooded over this episode, searching for significance. This was a lesson in humility. There were some things that just could not be fixed, no matter how persistent, stubborn, angry, ingenious or devious one was. When he emerged from his long introspection it was noted, with some sadness, that he was no longer quite the same arrogant young fellow that they had grown accustomed to.
The desire to change his name had been growing in him over a long period until finally it became an obsession. He was prepared to stay with Henry. Henry was such an ordinary name, so nondescript it could be applied to just about anyone and convey very little. In his reading of European history he had encountered hundreds of Henry’s. Henry The Bold, Henry The Older, Henry The Short, Henry The Bald, Henry The Sufferer, Henry The Lion, Henry The Saint, The Younger, The Proud, The Syphilitic, The Imbecile, The Forsaken, The Reaper. The list was endless. Anybody could be a plain Henry. There was something universal about Henry. But Henry Seamus Michael O’Riley? This was extravagantly Irish. It was the sort of name which made people say, “Ah, that’s an Irish name. So you’re of Irish stock, aren’t you?” He didn’t want a name which elicited such remarks. Such a name could draw him into complicated situations. He didn’t want to become embroiled in an argument about national characteristics, pride, patriotism, loyalty and duty. His cynicism was already deep-seated and wide-ranging, and many of his views might be considered radical and anti-social. He needed a name that was an instant declaration of non-alignment, an assertion of independence and freedom from obligation and responsibility. If at all possible, it should be a name that gave affront to the genteel and the pompous, warning them off, telling them to keep well clear, along with all their baggage.
He had been greatly encouraged by Naaktgeboren’s List but was unable to settle on any of the innumerable names that came to his fertile mind. Then one evening at the supper table inspiration came to him. They had been discussing the weather. Sultry, uncomfortable, full of unseen electricity and unheard thunder. If any of them had been stupid or unlucky enough to have sustained an injury in the War, their wound would have been playing up, throbbing in the bone where the shrapnel lay. Herr Fridemann’s kyphotic spine was troubling him and he was tense and irritable. Mrs Rabinowitz was short of breath. They were all sticky and on edge and impatient with one another but undivided in their opinion of the weather. This was the worst time of the year and until the rains began it was going to be hell. They lapsed into a disgruntled silence.
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